[RESOLVED] [XP Media Edition] Raid 1 Mirror Question

[Nix]

So I got my new Dell system delivered yesterday and it has twin 250Gb Sata drives.

The option that got me those also included Ghost 10 and some Dell Secure Backup Software.

After setting it all up I started having a look around and found that the drives are set up as Raid 1 using something called NVIDIA Mirror.

In windows I can see just one drive which is partioned into 60Gb as C: and the rest as D:

I wasn't aware that the drives would be set up as raid and was going to be quite happy just having them both show up in windows and use the seocnd one for storing by ghost images

The other thing I wanted to do was create another smallish partition on the 1st drive and install Win98SE to allow for playing older games (including DOS based) and have a dual boot.

I think I have read that you can't dual boot when using raid ??

During the BIOS boot up there is an Option Ctrl + N to get to the raid menu and in there is an option to turn off raid.

Can I do that or will it wipe the drives, maybe just the second drive ?

All this is new to me so any assitance would be good.

Other than that the system rocks with AMD 4200 XP 64 Dual Core, 1GB Ram, Media Centre - I'll add the full specs to my signature soon.

[SuperSparks]

You can dual-boot with RAID, it doesn't have any effect on that at all.

If you'd rather go back to independant disks (and I decided some time ago that plain old mirrored RAID is barely more secure, and you lose all that space), all you need to do is disable RAID in the BIOS. With mirrored RAID what you'll end up with in Windows Explorer is the two drives with identical partitions and data on each. You can zap the partitions in the secoind drive and set it up however you like.

Note to anybody with a striped array - if you disable the array in BIOS you'll then need to reinstall Windows afterwards, because tha data is spread over two drives it won't even boot after unRAIDing.

[Nix]

Hmm so I better check it's mirro raid before I disable it eh ?

Otherwise I'll be learning very quickly how all the DVDs / CDs I got work. LOL

[SuperSparks]

Well, I think if the worst came to the worst, and it was a striped array, all you would need to do would be to go back into the BIOS and re-enable it, and all should be back to normal.

[Nix]

Out of curiosity, what would happen if I then later changed my mind and wanted to re-enable the mirror raid ?

Would I just re-enable it in BIOS and it would rebuld the raid wiping out the 2nd HD ?

[SuperSparks]

Yes, I think so. I can't say for 100% certain, but I think it may wwell ask which drive you want to rebuild from as well.

[Nix]

Did ther colour in your signature just change ?

Teh yellow bit.

Or the text size or something, it was a bit easier to read earlier

[Nix]

Sounds too easy.

An interesting read here, not really to do with my problem but good nine the less http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=19546

[SuperSparks]

Yeah I'm still playing with it in Photoshop I haven't got it right yet.

[Nix]

phew I thought I was seeing things

[Nix]

all you need to do is disable RAID in the BIOS. With mirrored RAID what you'll end up with in Windows Explorer is the two drives with identical partitions and data on each.

That makes sense, but does something still remain on those disks that idicates it was an array at some stage.

I'm just curious because this guide http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_28159.html talks about deleting an array which makes me think that disabling in the BIOS is purely that, just disable and not remove.

And if that's the case where does this array information get stored ?

[Nix]

Ok I went into the Nvidia Mediashield software within windows and there was no option to delete arrays or anything - just thought I'd check there first.

So I went into BIOS and hit Ctrl-N to get into the raid menu.

There was an option there to Delete raid and another to clean disk, Ithought about using the Delete raid option, but thought it might be risky.

So I went back to the other BIOS settings and it found the raid option and disabled it.

Saved settings and rebooted.......

Black screen with flashing underscore......

XP icon with blue moving bar.....

But only for about 10 seconds....

Then list of users appears.

Logged in as admistrator and can see both hard drives with basically everything that is on the first doubled up on the second - exactly as SS said.